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| Video on planned obsolescence. |
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| BrokenYugo:
--- Quote from: SilverSolder on April 15, 2021, 03:03:08 pm --- --- Quote from: BrokenYugo on April 14, 2021, 09:09:39 pm --- I think any functional test for the presence of "planned obsolescence" has to include an intent to deliberately limit a product's lifespan. [...] --- End quote --- That seems as good a definition as any, but games can be played with this too... For example: is potting a pair of batteries into a set of earbuds "planned obsolescence" when conceivably, the batteries could have been made replaceable? What would you think of a car where the brake pads were not replaceable, but instead required changing the front suspension? --- End quote --- Fully potting a set of wireless earbuds increases water resistantance and means you can just shove the biggest lipo pouch possible in there, rather than a smaller lower capacity one in a consumer friendly package. There are fine reasons to do it besides screwing the consumer. I guess that would count, but it would almost certainly be ineffective and doesn't seem feasible to me. It is not uncommon in automotive to see otherwise serviceable things (like ball joints in the front end) riveted in, you just grind/drill the rivets, pound em out, and bolt the new part in with the included hardware. That's arguably a cost thing though. I can't think of how such a thing would be implemented for brake pads. The way that stuff goes together and works requires a bolted joint somewhere and the pads to more or less float, at most you'd be changing out a whole loaded caliper/bracket assembly, but it wouldn't take long for a workaround to be developed. Something like an aftermarket caliper bracket to use some other caliper and pads from the parts bin. There are companies who primarily exist to develop such improved aftermarket parts. |
| james_s:
--- Quote from: SilverSolder on April 15, 2021, 03:03:08 pm ---What would you think of a car where the brake pads were not replaceable, but instead required changing the front suspension? --- End quote --- I would want to know the rationale behind that decision. It would strike me as a very unusual way of getting someone to buy another car from that company so I would start by looking for another explanation, is there something very unique about the design of the front suspension that makes it a consumable wear item? Is it likely to wear out at about the same rate as a set of brake pads? It's hard with a hypothetical situation like this because I've never heard of such a car, but at the same time planned obsolescence wouldn't be my first thought because it would be such an unusual way of going about that. In my mind "planned obsolescence" is a deliberate attempt at limiting useful lifespan without achieving any savings in cost or improvement in the product. It involves engineering effort specifically for the purpose of causing predictable failure, or making something completely dependent on some outside system despite no real need for that to be, as in the case of some of the cloud based hardware in recent years. In many cases there is a gray area where there is potentially some advantage to the approach they took, but it also results in guaranteed obsolescence. In those cases it may be impossible to know what the true motivation behind it was, and there may have been multiple motivations. |
| tooki:
--- Quote from: BrokenYugo on April 14, 2021, 09:09:39 pm --- I think any functional test for the presence of "planned obsolescence" has to include an intent to deliberately limit a product's lifespan. Engineering choices made that reduce lifespan and have no other plausible explanation. Otherwise everything built to a price point is planned obsolescence, and the term becomes meaningless. --- End quote --- Yes! This. So much this! That’s exactly why I say that 99% of the accusations of planned obsolescence actually aren’t: value engineering is not planned obsolescence. The criterion people forget is that planned obsolescence means artificially reducing a product’s lifespan to less than its inherent lifespan. Engineering tradeoffs do not count! But indeed, people end up crying “planned obsolescence!” any time they disagree with an engineering decision. It doesn’t matter to them whether they are actually aware of what the actual design rationale was, or if they are aware, they dismiss it. There’s never, ever any “oh, yeah, I guess that does make sense”. |
| SilverSolder:
--- Quote from: tooki on April 15, 2021, 08:41:21 pm ---[...] artificially reducing a product’s lifespan to less than its inherent lifespan. [...] --- End quote --- So potting the battery into a laptop, you would call an "Inherent life span" design decision, i.e. the customer shouldn't have bought it if they didn't think this design was acceptable? |
| David Hess:
--- Quote from: NiHaoMike on April 12, 2021, 03:11:33 am --- --- Quote from: David Hess on April 09, 2021, 01:53:12 am ---I could make the same statement about electronically commutated motors which replaced shaded pole motors in refrigerator evaporators because of EPA requirements. I have never had one of these shaded pole motors fail, but I have had to replace the electronically commutated motor in my new refrigerator 6 times now in 10 years, and they cost $30 each. --- End quote --- Just bodge in a computer type ball bearing fan? Maybe even try with a variable speed fan and see what speed yields the best overall efficiency. --- End quote --- I may just install the old style shaded pole motor next time. |
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